Telecollaboration in foreign language education refers to the use of online communication tools to connect language learners in different countries for the development of collaborative project work and intercultural exchange. Telecollaboration covers a wide range of activities and exploits a variety of online communication tools, including e-learning platform, web-based message boards, podcasting, video conferencing and others social media.

The WKTO project involves students from 30 schools in 15 countries. They organize projects in German, Spanish and English languages. The students carry out a survey or write texts or poems in a language which is not their native language.

1. The pedagogical Principle : Virtual Classes. We work in virtual classes. What we call virtual classes are groups of students from different countries who are going to work together. A virtual class may be composed of (for example) : 2 Greek students, 2 Romanian, 2 Polish, 2 Swedish, 2 German and 2 French students. These students work asynchronously in the digital workspaces to carry out their project. "If your students’ native language is not English, you can join a project in the English language!" We have chosen to use one language only in each project. Let's take as an example French students who are studying English. If you ask a teacher in England to work with you he is not interested because there is no profit for his students. We have chosen the solution which consists in finding several partners in countries where the native language is not the project's language (in our example it is English), such as Russia, Romania or Sweden. In this case, all the students communicate in English.

2. Organization of a project: 6 Major steps are followed.

The teacher translates the Good Conduct Charter into the pupils' own language and asks them to agree to it.

Students get acquainted with the digital workspaces and do a test entry on the training page.

Each student submits a short text to introduce himself/herself.

Students are invited to work together on subjects decided by the teachers. Their texts may be accompanied by photos.

Finally, the results of these activities are recorded on the internet page of each virtual class.

(1) Download the DIALANG client software to your PC. (2) Install the DIALANG software on your PC. (3) Click the DIALANG icon to run DIALANG.You can download the DIALANG client software zip file (2.8 Mbytes) by clicking here.DIALANG needs Java (the Java Runtime Environment or JRE).• You may download the most recent Java JRE from the Java website.• Or: we know that DIALANG works correctly with this older version of Java: Click here.

3.2 ParticipantsThis project brought together the following exchange partners:• 5 adult learners from the Open University (UK)• 10 campus based students from Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and• 10 French native speakers enrolled in a MA programme for distance education (Master FOAD1) at the Université de Franche Comté (France) taught partly on site partly at a distance.

The student participants were complemented by a team of 7 tutor-researchers from allthree institutions. Table 2 summarises some of the circumstances under which eachlearner group took part in the project.While the UK learners were already familiar with the audio-graphic conferencingapplication, Lyceum, – their ‘natural’ tuition environment – the French and Americanstudents had to be trained in the use of this application. However, more than half of theparticipants (3 from the UK, 4 from the US, and 7 from France) had already created andmanaged a blog or at least contributed to one. Table 3 provides information regardingthe learners’ diverse backgrounds.

3.2 ToolsLyceum provides multiple synchronous audio channels for live online discussion as wellas a limited version of synchronous text chat, and several shared graphic interfaces (fora more detailed description of the available modes and their affordances

Unlike most telecollaboration projects this exchange involved the use of CMC to put students who were in the same city in contact with one another, Erasmus students who were studying at the University of Padova and Italian students of English language at the University of Padova. The aims of the project included the integration of Erasmus students in the local student community, stimulating interest in the Erasmus programme among Italian students, development of intercultural competence, Italian language (for the Erasmus students) and online literacies.